


Spin

by bironic



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Drabble Sequence, Episode Related, Gen, Hanukkah, Holiday, Jewish Character, Judaism, Metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bironic/pseuds/bironic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Wilson's life mimics a spinning dreidel, and House begins to pull out of his own self-destructive spiral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spin

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Tritter arc through "Merry Little Christmas," plus some (since-Jossed) speculation.
> 
> Metaphors based on the dreidel. Depending on which letter you spin, you either take some of the candies or coins from the pile in the middle or put some in from your own pile.

**_Shin_ – Put In**

Wilson gives and gives, feeding House a steady stream of Vicodin and cash and food and favors and second (third, fourth, fifth...) chances while the man absorbs it all and expects more, like a black hole sucking energy from a sun. Now he has no family, no home, no money, no car, no DEA license, no practice, and only a shadow of a best friend while he watches everything trail away into the void. Soon he won't have anything left to offer. Then, when he's been reduced to a helpless, hollow husk, he'll watch House seethe and collapse into oblivion.  
   
   
**_Gimmel_ – Take Everything**

One meeting with Tritter—one breach of loyalty for the sake of saving his friend, though it may cost him that friendship—and he can access his accounts, drive his car, treat his patients, pay for his hotel room. Though it's an undeniable relief to regain his life, as Cameron was so eager to point out, the most important thing is that House will at last be coerced into accepting the help Wilson has been trying to get him for years.

He has won everything back and then some. So why does it feel as though he's lost the game?  
   
   
**_Hey_ – Take Half **

When he tells Tritter he's reneging on the deal, Wilson welcomes the return of his pride and integrity. It's only a matter of time until House and Cuddy and Cameron speak to him again. He firmly believed he was acting in House's best interests before, but he sees now that this is the right thing to do, small comfort though it'll be when he takes the fall to keep his miserable, brilliant, fragile friend in medicine where he belongs.

Then Tritter tells him they'll both go to prison, and it turns out to be a smaller victory than he thought.  
   
   
**_Nun_ – Do Nothing**

He's sure even as he stumbles over the couch in his haste to get to his fallen friend that the goddamn stubborn idiot finally managed to do what the infarction, Vicodin, motorcycle and gunman hadn't. The surge of panic shatters into relief, horror and fury when he finds House conscious. He conjures some semblance of clinical detachment and gives him a perfunctory once-over.

He'll live. Not for long if he keeps this shit up, but for tonight he'll be fine.

That settled, Wilson gathers the courage to do what's best for House but hardest on them both.

He walks out.  
   
   
**_Nes Gadol Haya Sham_**

Wilson sits at his desk, playing with one of the plastic dreidels he ordered for the pediatric ward at the beginning of the month. This one is a deep, bright blue. He turns it over and over in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the raised letters, and then gives it a spin. It forges a confident trail across the blotter before it catches on the stack of patient files and thumps to a stop.

He recognizes the elegant W-shaped letter _shin_ but can't remember what it means in the game. He doesn't remember the Hebrew sentence the letters stand for, either; the soft words his grandfather taught him and his brothers when they were kids have long since faded from memory. He does, however, recall the translation: "A great miracle happened there." A reference to the Hanukkah oil that lasted eight days when it should have burned out after only one. A celebration of perseverance despite certain disaster.

Movement in the hall catches his eye. House is standing there, waving a folder as he berates Chase and Foreman. He's been looking and behaving better since he announced his intention to check into rehab—less desperate, more determined, though still in pain—and from what Cuddy tells him, he's been accepting her carefully rationed pills without complaint.

After more than twenty years dealing with a broken family, failed marriages and terrible disease, Wilson hesitates to believe in miracles. Yet he can't help but hope that this time House will control his pain. That they will deal with Tritter somehow, and everything will go back to normal, only better.

He realizes that House is staring at him. Wilson meets his gaze. After a moment, House nods a greeting. Wilson nods back.

It may not be a miracle, but it's a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to <http://bironic.livejournal.com/55623.html>


End file.
